Creative People (UX/UI/Fed), The future is now! – UX Planet

by · October 9, 2018

It’s now possible to use your smartphone to get some UX/UI/Fed job done!

I just tried Figma and Gravit Designer on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with The Samsung DeX (Docking Station) and the desktop experience is so good and intuitive when the DeX is connected to Large display, Keyboard, and mouse). Well it could be (and it almost is!) a real productive machine even for Professional UX / UI Designers, and FrontEnd Developers among us!

It’s not Windows 10! It’s Samsung’s DeX UX when my device is connected to a large display

Bad News First!

Unfortunately I can’t interact with Figma at all, I can zoom in and out, but I can’t edit, modify, or use most of the tools, can’t create shapes and even the text tool is not working. I tried it on Chrome and Samsung’s Browser but no luck, Unfortunately FireFox is not supported on DeX yet, so I’ll try it and update you guys once / if it will be supported on DeX.

Can’t use Figma on DeX 🙁

So, I hope that Figma devs will fix that weird behavior ASAP, or create a native app for Android, because Figma is the best alternative for Sketch which is only for Mac (just like Adobe in the 90s 😂).

The Good News!

At least Gravit Designer works just fine! It has a little bit glitches, but considering the fact that I just opened an heavy file with Google’s Material Design guidelines, it worked just fine after few seconds! And when creating new project, it works great, can’t tell the difference, feels like I’m working on my computer!

Gravit Designer works just fine 🙂

I hope there will be a native app for Android, because just before Gravit Designer was acquired by Corel, they had plans for Android app. But looks like they ditched it. 😐

UI/UX Design on a Mobile Phone? Yep!

A quick design on DeX with Gravit DesignerGravit Designer on my Note 9 works good with Material Design (large file)

A Creative Bonus!

And for the creative people out there, you can turn your Galaxy Note 9 into a Wacom like experience. The S-Pen has 4,096 pressure levels and when you use your Note 9 as Wacom Pad, you can enjoy so many creative apps for that pen. Adobe apps, Autodesk apps, and other creative apps for the S-Pen and Apple Pencil in the google play store and Galaxy AppStore. In my case, I enjoy painting and also sketching UX wireframes…

You can pin your favorite apps to the desktop and the taskbar (dock)Press the Winkey / CMD on your keyboard to see all applications on your device

Wrapping up

Well, looks like we are close to the vision I’ve been writing about in my article series on Medium, but as for now, I guess that I’ll have to keep carrying my MacBook Pro 15′ with me 😏.

Multitasking works just like on your computer (Alt+Tab / CMD+Tab)

So as for now, it’s not really a replacement for a laptop, or a desktop computer, but we are really close! So it’s good to know that my smartphone can display a computer-like interface on top of an external monitor in order to allow me to get some serious work done. I use Microsoft Office for Android in order to write down documents in word, and I use PowerPoint in order to create presentations, and then I can even use it on Presentation mode when my Note 9 is mirrored to a large display / projector (via HDMI or Wireless/Mircast device) and it’s so fun to use the S-Pen as a remote control in order to switch slides! feels like magic!

P.S. Some of you already know me, I love innovation and out of the box thinking, and as you know, I’m developing a new HCI tech in order to make modular computing easy and intuitive for everyone, even for blind and visually impaired people. More details in the future…